Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  The operator hesitated only a fraction of a second, then cleared his board and shoved the transmitter into Yallia’s hands. “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Thank you. Can you please connect me to the Dome frequency? I think some of them inside might be wondering what we want.” She spoke sweetly, and the operator grinned.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and adjusted some controls, then nodded to her.

  Yallia’s tone hardened perceptibly. “This is Yallia, leader of the outcast group that is now outside your Valhalla Dome. I stand ready to dictate terms for your surrender.”

  The other two operators gasped while Yallia’s technician made an incoherent but identifiable sound of exultation.

  There was a considerable pause before the receiver crackled to life. “This is Commissar-General Nessel. You will disperse the mob outside our Dome immediately or we shall consider it an act of war and retaliate appropriately.”

  “I’m sorry, Nessel, have we not made ourselves clear? This is already an act of war. The last act. If you do not agree to an immediate and unconditional surrender, my soldiers will blow a hole in your Valhalla Dome and kill everyone inside. If you try to send soldiers or police out of the Dome in environment suits, rest assured that they will be taken care of by sharpshooters who are even now at every Dome exit. If you send one of your flying drones after us, I shall set off the explosives.”

  Yallia loved the irony. The explosives had not yet been set, and the “sharpshooters” were just Family men and woman armed with rifles. But the bluff was a good one precisely because it was so near the truth. Yallia knew that all available Dome personnel were at the nearest terraforming station waiting for an attack that would never come. She was taking a slight risk that the Dome did not have automatic defenses, but she was comforted by the presence of the spy amongst the Family. For the Domers to think they needed up-to-date intelligence meant they were not wholly certain of their own military superiority. Yallia was taking a chance, but it was a good one.

  Again, a long pause preceded Nessel’s reply. “Nothing will be gained, for either of us, through violence. We agree to negotiations on whatever point you wish, but we will not submit to—”

  Yallia interrupted angrily, “No negotiations. We demand your surrender. Open the Dome to us peacefully and we shall take over your administration without bloodshed. Refuse us and we will blast our way in and take over in any case. You have three minutes to decide.” She switched off the transmitter and tossed it back to the operator. “You might want to dial up the commanders, or do whatever it is you do to get in touch with them. Tell them what I’ve done.”

  She listened indifferently to the three operators relay the story quickly and efficiently to the various commanders of the ragtag army. Presently, one of the technicians turned to her and said, “Ma’am, incoming message from Valhalla.”

  Yallia nodded and Nessel’s voice once again filled the cabin. “We agree to your demands. You may enter through the southwest lock. We will offer no resistance unless you violate your part of the bargain, in which case we will have to defend ourselves.”

  Despite herself, Yallia felt a grudging sense of admiration for her counterpart in the Dome. This Nessel knew she had been outmaneuvered but refused to give up completely. Yallia felt she was a woman with whom she could work.

  “You have my word, Commissar-General: we will not initiate violence.” Yallia looked at the radio operator. “Get the force commanders on this. I want to talk to all of them at the same time.” When the technician indicated she was patched in, she issued instructions to the commanders. There was little debate—the commanders under her were in awe of her sudden, swift victory.

  Scarcely an hour later, Yallia, accompanied by six of the Family’s most able soldiers, stepped into the offices of Commissar-General Liduth Nessel.

  Nessel had chosen to meet Yallia with four of her own guards, taken from Valhalla’s police force, flanking her. Her office had not been designed for large meetings: the dozen people crowded the room and were forced to stand uncomfortably close to one another.

  Yallia grinned as she saw Nessel and her men try not to grimace at the smell of chlorine. She knew that she and her entourage reeked of the stuff—it would give her even more of an edge in the conference. She decided to take the initiative and speak first.

  “Commissar-General, I thank you for meeting with me in such a peaceful setting,” she said, eyeing the Domer’s guards pointedly. Yallia ignored Nessel’s returning stare at the Family guards stationed around her and continued. “Our demands are simple. You will turn over control of the Domes to the Family.”

  “As exercised by you, no doubt?” said a scratchy voice that momentarily made Yallia’s spine shiver. She knew that voice…as she turned to face the speaker, her eyes confirmed the knowledge of her ears.

  Carll Tann emerged from a side room and made his way to the center of Nessel’s office to stand face-to-face with Yallia. He gave no sign that he noticed her powerful odor. “I take it you speak for the entire Family, Yallia Verdafner?”

  “I do not use that name,” Yallia said, her voice shaky.

  “As you wish,” he said dismissively. He did not speak for a few moments, but he managed to convey disgust and contempt for Yallia, her guards, and the entire Family with a few facial gestures. He stopped his harrowing review and turned back to Yallia. “You want to control the Domes, do you?”

  Yallia swallowed. She did not understand her own reactions. Why was this man affecting her so much? Could she still be frightened of him, after almost twenty-five years? He was a desiccated old man, on the brink of death—why was she so afraid of him? “You have perpetrated war on us, and we—”

  “Ah. The classic rationalization of the barbarian: ‘you started it!’” he said in a faint imitation of a child’s indignant squeal. “And now, you come to take your vengeance on us, eh? You, Yallia Verdafner, will settle an old score even if it means you have to sacrifice your followers to do so.”

  “That’s not it,” she said, and cursed herself for her defensive attitude. She did not have to explain herself to this man! She said, stridently, “We are taking control of this planet. You have nothing to say about it.”

  “You would take control? You? You threatened to kill thousands of innocent people, children even, if we did not let you in. You come to us armed with explosives and demand to govern?”

  Yallia was uncomfortably aware that her guards had shifted their positions somewhat—a bit of shuffling here, and nervous cough there—it all added up to uncertainty. She needed to recapture this conversation.

  “You sent a robot flyer to kill four people. One of them was a child.”

  Tann did not flinch from the accusation. “True,” he said softly, “and for that, we are truly sorry. We were investigating the scientific anomaly as you were. Our flyer reacted inappropriately. We understand that one of your Family members was killed as a result. You have the Dome’s complete apology.” He paused to let the words sink in. “Now,” he said, his voice firm once more, “will you agree to negotiations? You must have grievances to come her so forcefully. We will hear them.”

  Yallia ground her teeth. Here, now, at the very moment of her triumph, this man threatened to take it all away with sugared words. “We will not be deflected. You are willing to listen now, because you have no choice. As soon as we withdraw our forces, you will not listen. You will send troops to crush us. I have had a taste of your diplomacy before, Carll Tann. You will not fool me as you did my parents.”

  “Your parents were quite wise, Yallia. They made a sacrifice to preserve the entire colony. Here, in the Domes at least, they are revered as heroes. Will you make even the smallest gesture of goodwill towards your fellow humans in the Domes? Or will you kill as many as you have to in order to be heard? I am listening now—Commissar-General Nessel is listening now. What more do you want?”

  Yallia stopped herself from answering. What did she want? Why had she come here? She realized tha
t she had wanted, like all children, to come home again. She had done so—was she not back inside the Domes?—but she could never turn the clock back. There was no going backwards. Only forwards.

  At that instant of realization, she suddenly understood to whom this planet truly belonged. An image of Sirra, sitting quietly in the makeshift raft, looking down at the sea-creatures below, floated in her mind.

  “I want the terraforming project abandoned.” Yallia said.

  Tann smiled. He had obviously been expecting that answer. “Madam Verdafner, surely you see the benefits of the project. You and your kind can survive quite comfortably in an atmosphere devoid of chlorine. We cannot. Would you refuse your fellow humans, who, I might add, outnumber you ten to one, access to this world on a footing equal to your own? The future of the colony depends on the terraforming project.”

  “No, Tann. You’ve got it wrong. You’ve been thinking of the colony as the ‘pure’ humans in the Domes. Can’t you see that the Family is the colony? You Domers can create chlorine-adapted people at will instead of changing the planet to suit your needs.”

  “And what of those hundred thousand people who will never be chlorine-breathers?”

  “The Domes will support them for the rest of their lives. But the future belongs to us.”

  Tann shook his head sadly. “Yallia, the tragedy here is that I think you truly believe what you are saying.” He sighed and suddenly seemed very old. “I had not wanted to reveal this next datum, for fear of being accused of bribery, but I can see I must.” He looked at the entire Family assemblage and said, “Our scientists have developed a way to reverse your mutation. We stand ready to accept you all back into the Domes. All will be forgiven.”

  Chapter 19

  Yallia stared at Tann for a long moment. True or not, the statement was a master stroke. She felt something within her leap in anticipation of a grand welcome back to a mystical “home” even as the rational part of her fought for control. Images of a joyous home life, her parents, magically young again, and friends laughing with her at a party crowded out her inner protests. Tann had managed to tap into a deep desire she had not even realized she possessed.

  She suspected the six guards, none of whom were Originals, did not share her feelings—having been born outside, they would not see Tann’s offer as a homecoming. Tann had managed to offer a bribe that would be tantalizing to Family leadership, but not the majority of the outsiders. If even a fraction of the Originals accepted the offer, the Family would never be the same. Those who stayed would forever question their decision and would spend their remaining days looking up at the Dome, wondering if they could go back. Yallia knew in that moment that this was precisely what she had been doing for her twenty-four year exile. Her emotions boiled away at the realization and what remained was the hard residue of hatred for Carll Tann—but not for the man of twenty-four years ago; for the man before her now who threatened to take away what he had inadvertently given her.

  She found her voice. “All will be forgiven, you say. You will forgive us, the outcasts, the exiles, their crimes?” Yallia’s eyes bored into Tann’s. “What crimes are we guilty of? You cast us out, you drove us from our homes, and you attacked and killed Viktur Ljarbazz.” As she said the name, the thought of the sea-creatures and Sirra’s affection for them reentered her mind. She tried to maintain her focus, but the image of the little girl talking to the sea-creatures persisted.

  “Come back to us,” Tann was saying. His voice was almost hypnotic.

  Yallia saw herself suddenly on a precipice. She imagined that before her was the sea, crashing violently against rocks below her. Behind her, she knew, was safety and comfort. She could step away from the edge and rejoin her fellows on the solid ground at any time. But to go backwards, she knew, meant the future would be forever closed to humanity. Safety and order was stultifying.

  In her mind’s eye, she leapt off the precipice into the sea.

  Carll Tann’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he saw Yallia’s face grow hard again. In that moment, both Yallia and Tann knew that he had lost her. And the war.

  “I will grant permission for anyone who wishes to return to the Domes for your…treatment,” Yallia said. “Don’t expect many customers, Tann.” She smiled wolfishly. “Furthermore, Family policy is unchanged—we will accept any of your children you care to send us. We will integrate them into our culture—”

  “You will integrate them? Why should Domers have to integrate into anything?”

  “Integration is a mutual process, Tann. Both sides adapt,” Yallia said, then added. “But the terraforming project is finished.”

  Tann was beaten, but he stubbornly refused to admit defeat. “And how will you stop the project?” His voice was no longer silky. “You discovered our agent among you, obviously, and used him against us. But because of that agent, we took precautions to protect our terraforming installations. They are well defended. Your motley band of so-called soldiers would suffer very heavy casualties should you attempt an attack.”

  “All of them?” Yallia sneered. There were thousands of the installations churning out gengineered microorganisms every day. Tann could not possibly defend all of them, or even most of them. That wasn’t the point, however. “I have no intention of attacking the installations. Commissar-General Nessel will simply order them dismantled.”

  Before Nessel could answer, Tann said, “She will do nothing of the kind.”

  “Then I will detonate the explosives and kill all inside this Dome. All the Domers, that is.”

  There was a moment of shocked silence before Tann said, “You will not do that. Kill thousands of innocent people? Such an act of barbarism is beyond even you.”

  Yallia took a step closer to Tann and said quietly, dangerously, “Do not make the mistake of underestimating me, Tann. I am not my mother.” She snorted. “You certainly remember my grandmother? Perhaps resolve skips a generation. I am prepared to kill thousands, hundreds of thousands, in order to safeguard the future of the Family.”

  “Do you hear this woman?” Tann almost shouted at the others in Nessel’s office. “She is openly advocating terrorism and mass murder in the name of genealogy!”

  “No less than what you have done, Tann,” Yallia said, matching his shouts with near-whispers.

  Tann swiveled his head to look at her with newfound awareness. “What I did I did for the future of humanity here.”

  “Segregation is never the answer. I offer you two choices: destruction at the hands of the Family, or unification.”

  Tann started at her. Yallia had never seen such hatred in another human being. She wondered which he hated more—the fact that he had lost, finally, after all these years, or that it was an outcast that had defeated him.

  Or a Verdafner?

  “I choose destruction,” Tann growled.

  Nessel interjected with such force as to make the rest of those present jump in surprise. “You do not speak for the Domes, Carll. We will agree to Yallia’s demands, subject to negotiation of certain points.”

  Yallia ignored the last. Nessel could have her way in many things—Yallia could afford to be generous now. She kept her eyes on Tann.

  “I understand, Commissar-General,” Tann said. “I was speaking for myself only. I choose destruction. For myself.”

  Yallia felt no sense of loss as the old, old man hobbled out of the room, far more ancient a man now than when he had entered.

  Nessel was droning something about sending an emissary to the Family for negotiations, but Yallia cut her off. “We will send someone here. In the meantime, I suggest you arrange for the surrender of your armed forces and make whatever administrative maneuvers you have to to turn the government over to the Family temporarily. I will send one of my best men here to take over.”

  Nessel looked at her inquiringly, and Yallia added, “I have…matters to attend to.”

  Yallia made quick arrangements with the most capable of the three force commanders to act
as interim military governor until she sent the permanent man in his place. She left as many details to the force commander as possible and commandeered one of the transports for a trip back to the Family.

  “I know why you did it,” Yallia said to him before he could speak. They were alone in the Assembly room adjoining her farm. “And you still have the option to return. I made sure of that. The Domers will still…change you back, if you wish.” She spoke calmly, not trusting herself to admit to emotion. She did not even know what emotion would win out—anger? Love? Disappointment?

  He did not answer. Yallia felt anger winning out in her.

  “In retrospect, I was a fool not to see it earlier. I had enough signs. All your suggestions and ideas, in Session and in private, pointed to it. I suppose I didn’t want to believe. But the flyer attack was proof. That was Tann’s mistake.”

  “It should have killed you.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Still, it didn’t.” Yallia had ceased to wonder about that. The flyer had malfunctioned, and she knew why. She knew how the fishing boat had found them, as well. But none of that mattered now. She was alive; that was all that mattered.

  “I’m glad it didn’t.”

  Yallia looked at him. “Are you?” The comment did not really surprise her. She shrugged. “You cannot remain here. If you want to go back to the Domes, I will not stop you. If you want to just wander off into the hills, I won’t stop you. I’ll even give you some supplies.”

  “I want to….”

  “What?”

  “I want to see your child grow.” He said it in a small voice, not looking at her.

  “No.” It was a flat denial from which there could be no appeal. “I must warn you—I will not allow you any contact with her.”

  “Her? I thought we…you were having a boy?”